Courant: The French want democratic innovation

Posted on June 27, 2026 by Yoram Gat

Dimitri Courant writes in The Conversation about French opinions regarding allotted decision-making bodies. The original is in French, some translated excerpts are below.

A desire for democracy, not an “electocracy”

The findings are stark from the outset: Only 13% of the respondents trust politics, 17% trust the government and 21% trust the National Assembly. But 80% support a democratic political system.

The French do not reject democracy, they reject electocracy – a form of government which is based on the election of elites with a binding mandate, where the representatives are not held to the preferences of those who elected them.

This rejection does not translate into naive support for citizen assemblies, also called citizen conventions in France. Thus, 67% of those surveyed think that it is good for citizens to participate in those conventions, and 50% trust those assemblies. But among the 35% who do not trust them, 56% percent justify their skepticism with a revealing phrase: citizen assemblies are “a scam which allows politicians to buy time and engage in public relations”.
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The ideology behind the notion of the deliberative transformation

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Yoram Gat

In a previous post I discussed the “deliberative transformation”, a favorite trope within the theory of “deliberative democracy”. I pointed out that whereas the deliberative democrats see this hypothetical phenomenon as an ideal (maybe the central normative goal of their theory, more important than any policy outcomes), such a phenomenon, if it were really a widespread phenomenon as the deliberative democrats imagine, would be a major obstacle to an allotment-based democratic system (which, it is worth mentioning, is the only theoretically well-motivated schema of a democratic system).

This post considers the ideological structure that is associated with the idea of the deliberative transformation.

It may be claimed that the rather obvious, but of course unadmitted, starting point of the deliberative democracy theory, is that the adherents of the theory are concerned by the fact that the mass of citizens often refuse to support certain ideas that are accepted by the adherents as truth. Classically the reaction to the fact that citizens cannot be depended upon to see things as they are seen by an elite group was to assert that government should be left to those who are enlightened enough to see things as they should be seen. However, in the modern democratic age such crude elitism is unacceptable. Thus, the deliberative democrats seek a cure for the popular disorder. According to this view, deliberation is nothing more than the treatment that the deliberative democrats prescribe to the recalcitrant masses. It is the process which will lead the masses out of the Platonic cave and into the dazzling light of rational thought. If applied correctly, this treatment will inevitably, indeed, by definition of correctness, make the masses accept the objective truths, those that will lead them to support the policy choices preferred by the deliberative democrats.
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The deliberative transformation

Posted on May 16, 2026 by Yoram Gat

A favorite narrative of “deliberative democracy” is what may be called the “deliberative transformation”. According to this trope many people emerge from deliberative forums radically transformed. They become more enlightened, more tolerant, and consequently they hold “better” ideas and positions. Importantly, the change in positions is not merely that people who had been consciously uninformed and have not had a firm opinion on a certain matter have become informed and developed positions based on the newly acquired information. Such a change is unsurprising and is a natural occurrence in any process of study and consideration. Rather the phenomenon of “transformation” is that people who had held firm opinions going into the forum emerge from it newly and firmly holding contradictory opinions to those they had held.

In fact, it often appears (and may or may not be stated explicitly) that as far as deliberative democrats are concerned the deliberative transformation is the main objective of deliberative democracy. Deliberative democracy frees the unenlightened masses from their brutish shackles and allows them to adopt correct ideas whose veracity they were previously unable to perceive in their pre-deliberation situation.

There are various factual questions that may be asked with regard to the deliberative transformation phenomenon. The first is about its existence (or prevalence): do many people in fact change firmly held views as a result of participation in deliberations or is this a fairly rare phenomenon. At least as important are the questions about the nature of this transformation. Are the post-transformation ideas determined by the “deliberation” itself, as the deliberative democrats assert, rather than an artifact of certain parameters of the deliberative setup. Could different setups, different ways to arrange the discussion, different ways to present information, different ways to phrase the topic of discussion, generate different patterns of change in ideas?
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Who speaks for Iran?

Posted on March 10, 2026 by HpR

An open letter to the Iran diaspora

The Islamic Republic is collapsing. What comes next will be determined not only by what happens inside Iran, but by whether those outside it can demonstrate something the regime never could: the ability to put Iran before themselves.

What is currently visible in the diaspora is not encouraging. Monarchists and republicans, MEK supporters and secular leftists, Kurdish federalists and Persian nationalists — each group convinced of its own mandate, each dismissing the others’ legitimacy. Reza Pahlavi draws on popular acclaim. Maryam Rajavi draws on decades of organization and international recognition. Others draw on ideology, on exile networks, on foreign backing. All claim to represent the Iranian people.

None of them do. Not because their intentions are wrong, but because representation cannot be claimed. It must be demonstrated.

This is precisely where the Arab Spring failed. In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria — every transition collapsed not because of the old regime, but because the legitimacy vacuum was filled by competing factions fighting for power, each convinced its mandate was sufficient. The result was not democracy but a new cycle of authoritarianism, civil war, or chaos. Iran faces the same structural danger. And the diaspora’s current fragmentation is not a preview of Iranian democracy. It is a preview of its failure.

There is one question that cuts through every claim to legitimacy: Would you accept an outcome you did not shape?

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Jakobi: Lottocracy as Democracy

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Yoram Gat

Lottocracy as Democracy: Political Equality, Representation and Public Control without Elections? is the Ph.D. thesis of Julia Jakobi written in 2024 at the university of Hamburg under the supervision of Christine Straehle and Annabelle Lever. In the introduction Jakobi writes that “[i]n the following I will ask: is lottocracy the better form of democracy?” and “[t]he aim of this thesis is […] to assess the democratic legitimacy of randomly selected citizens’ assemblies, independent of additional approval by elected politicians. To do so, I focus on Alexander Guerrero’s (2014; 2020; 2021a; 2021b) utopian proposal of lottocracy.” (Interestingly, this was being done exactly at the time that Guerrero was finally publishing his long promised book on this subject.)

I have not read the thesis carefully from end to end but it seems like it is to a large extent a typical product of the genre of academic work on sortition. It cites the usual sources and covers the usual topics (equality, representation, participation, accountability, deliberation) in the usual manner, ultimately leaving the reader without a clear structure for understanding the issues involved. It is however an accessible work (and much shorter than Guerrero’s book, for example) and can serve as a starting point for those who are interested in and are unfamiliar with the academic work on the subject.

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Citizens’ conventions: The sweet trap of a democratic facade

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Yoram Gat

An opinion column in Le Télégramme, a regional newspaper of Brittany, France. Original in French. The version below is a translation by Google Translate with my touch-ups.

In an opinion piece, Agnès Le Brun, regional councilor and former mayor of Morlaix, shares her perspective on participatory democracy as practiced through citizens’ conventions.

They present themselves as the miracle cure for a weary democracy, the supposedly “sweet” remedy to reconcile citizens with public decision-making. Citizens’ conventions, with their reliance on sortition and participatory deliberation, are appealing because of their promise: to bring “real life” into the world of political decision-making. But behind this veneer of democratic innovation too often lies a carefully cultivated illusion, one that harms democracy as much as it claims to revitalize it.

The first pitfall is the pretense of participation. These mechanisms are presented as a break with traditional institutions. In reality, behind a supposedly depoliticized staging of the debate, the agenda is set from above, the topics are framed, and the conclusions are rarely taken seriously by those who commissioned them.

The perennial issue of decentralization, a quintessentially Breton topic, and Loïg Chesnais-Girard’s campaign promises, diluted over time, have led the President of the Brittany Region to propose a citizens’ convention in 2026, supposedly to address the subject in the most democratic way possible. Really? Sortition is primarily a convenient pretext for circumventing elections and allows for the maintenance of the illusion of representativeness. Because a few dozen Bretons are chosen at random, the claim is that “the people” are being heard.
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Sortition and rotation, a school of self-organization

Posted on August 27, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Edmund Griffiths is a long-time advocate for sortition. Griffiths revisits the topic in the context of the new party that is in the process of formation in the UK.

The most immediate topic is the matter of a founding conference. It seems that the plan is to somehow have a procedure of mass voting: “one member one vote, it looks like having an accessible way of engaging which is both in-person and hybrid [online, presumably -YG]”. But of course the final up-or-down vote is a small part of the decision making process.

Griffiths writes:

As in most plebiscitary systems, nearly everything would come down to how the questions were worded and presented; the faceless masses, atomized and unable to suggest amendments, would vote as they were invited to. This hybrid-OMOV system would thus devolve almost all the real decision-making power on the people who hold it now—the new party’s still-invisible leadership. Naturally we don’t know all their names. But it is hardly a secret that at least some of them are (a) independent bigwigs; I would not be astonished to learn that the others include (b) leading members of left groups who have worked with the bigwigs in front organizations; and there could even be a handful of (c) mouthy individuals among them.

[I]n fairness, you could do worse. I am proud to count (a) bigwigs (well, small-time bigwigs), and (b) left group factional operators, and (c) let’s call them people who don’t hate the sound of their own voices, among my friends. But if we want something more representative, something genuinely democratic, there is only one easy and obvious way to get it: just pick the delegates at random out of the entire membership.

Griffiths then fleshes out his proposal a bit:
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National & International Change

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Owen Shaffer

I am looking for folks who support the sortition + deliberation movement in general but want to put a stronger focus on making changes at the national and international level. I don’t want to restart the debate on which way is best – from the top or from grassroots. I simply want to find like-minded people. Send an email to dshaffer@lander.edu if interested.

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Listen up, ruling elites: It’s not enough to be for the people, you must be with the people

Posted on May 16, 2025 by Yoram Gat

Clearly, “by the people” is a non-starter, so Nathan Gardels advises those readers of Noema magazine who are members of the benevolent, if a bit misguided, elites that if they wish to stem the rise of the authoritarian strongmen they better be “with” the people.

The rigid polarization that has gripped our societies and eroded trust in each other and in governing institutions feeds the appeal of authoritarian strongmen. Poised as tribunes of the people, they promise to lay down the law (rather than be constrained by it) […]

The embryonic forms of this next step in democratic innovation, such as citizens’ assemblies or virtual platforms for bringing the public together and listening at scale, have so far been mostly advisory to the powers-that-be, with no guarantee that citizen input will have a binding impact on legislation or policy formation. That is beginning to change.

[This takes us] a step closer to government “with” the people instead of just “for” the people […]

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Just sortition, communitarian deliberation

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Yoram Gat

A new paper by Nicole Curato, Amiltone Luís, Melisa Ross, and Lucas Veloso in Environmental Science & Policy includes field work eliciting comments from people in Zambezia, Mozambique regarding their views on sortition in the context of the allotted Climate Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency.

Just sortition, communitarian deliberation: Two proposals for grounded climate assemblies

Abstract

Sortition or recruiting randomly selected everyday citizens is a core feature of climate assemblies. Sortition, the argument goes, enforces the principle of inclusiveness, as everyone has a fair shot at getting invited to the climate assembly. This form of recruitment, however, faces criticism. It challenges traditional structures of representation and decision-making where elders, religious leaders, elected representatives, and community organisers typically give voice to the ideas and grievances of everyday people. For some, sortition valorises the atomised individual who can speak their mind in a forum, without any mechanism for the individual to reconnect their deliberative experience to the wider community. In this article, we draw on the experience of the province of Zambezia in Mozambique as one randomly selected Assembly Member took part in the world’s first Climate Assembly on the Climate and Ecological Emergency. Based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and feedback sessions with local organisations in Zambezia, we offer practical insight on how sortition can deepen community connection and maximise the impact of climate assemblies in delivering practical outcomes for climate change adaptation. Using grounded normative theory, our study demonstrates how sortition can promote justice by elevating the voices of those most impacted by climate change. We also demonstrate why a communitarian approach to citizen assemblies enhances accountability and shared learning and empowers members to translate global deliberations into local actions.

One useful contribution of this article is a summary of the arguments for and against sortition that the authors drew from the literature.
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Filed under: Academia, Applications, Deliberation, Sortition | 25 Comments »

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